WHY RACE MATTERS: A PREVIEW

Michael Levin*
[Editors Note: Michael Levins new book, Why Race Matters: Race
Differences and What They Mean,1 is being published in early 1997. Here,
he highlights several of the key issues from his forthcoming book, especially
those having to do with individual liberty.]

I
y main concerns in Race, as its title indicates, are the im
plications of genetic race differences, not their existence
per se, so it was not strictly necessary for me to document
these differences. It would have sufficed to ask, purely
hypothetically, what follows if they exist. However, two
incongruent yet related considerations forced a substantial
discussion of the empirical issue. The first is that many people
find the consequences of race differences so obvious that they only
need to be convinced that blacks and whites do differ genetically
to have read enough. At the same time there are many others
who regard the possibility of race differences as too fantastic to
be worth thinking about. For them, the topic has all the urgency
of UFOs. To win their attention, it must be shown that genetic
race differences are likely enough to take seriously.

The scientific material in Race is hardly original. Except for

a statistical tweak or two, all the evidence for race differences
cited in Race can be found in the standard literature of the subject.
Since so few people seem to be listening, however, the facts bear
repetition.

II
Race begins with a short exposition of the relevant biological
and statistical concepts, particularly the distinction between
phenotypes and genotypes. A phenotype is any trait of an
organism: IQ, birth weight, and weight in adulthood are
examples. An organisms genotype is the genetic basis of its
*
Michael Levin is Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York and the
Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
1

Michael Levin, Why Race Matters: Race Differences and What They Mean (Westport,
Conn.: Praeger, 1997). Documentation for all claims unreferenced in the present
paper may be found there.
THE JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES 12:2 (FALL 1996): 295321. 1996 CENTER FOR LIBERTARIAN STUDIES

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phenotypes, the DNA that produce phenotypes in the

environment(s) to which the organism is exposed.
Note the interaction of genotype with environment. Not only
may different genotypes produce different phenotypes in the
same environment, the same genotype may produce different
phenotypes in different environments. Had you been born with
the same genes but raised on rice instead of hamburger, your
weight would probably differ. Liberal environmentalists make
much of this interactionsome going so far as to deny that talk
of genetic input makes any sensebut it also means that
phenotypes, and phenotypic differences between individuals or
groups, can be identified apart from their possible genetic basis.
One need not know whether an observed race difference is genetic
or environmental in origin to be sure it is real.
In particular, the evidence that blacks and whites2 differ in
phenotypic intelligence and motivation is overwhelming. For
the eight decades during which IQ tests and related measures of
mental ability have been given, white populations have
consistently outscored black populations by slightly more than
one standard deviation. Despite some talk of the IQ gap
narrowing, the most recent studies continue to indicate that the
full 1 SD difference emerges by age four.3
IQ tests are often said to measure only acculturation to white
society, or to distort black intelligence because whites design
them.4 If standardized tests picked up only knowledge of white
culture, the questions most whites answer correctlythe easy
onesshould be those querying aspects of their culture available
to most whites (Who was Thomas Edison?), while harder
questions should be those querying white cultures more obscure
aspects (What is a niblick?). Yet questions easy for whites are
consistently found to be relatively easy for blacks also, and the
questions hardest for whites are those hardest for blacks,
implying similar acculturation between blacks and whites, so the
claim of cultural bias is surely incorrect.
Further evidence that IQ measures an intrinsic mental
2

And Asians, but that is not my topic.

C. Peoples, J. Fagan and D. Drotar, The Influence of Race on 3-year-old
Childrens Performance on the Stanford-Binet: Fourth Edition, Intelligence 21
(1995); J. Brooks-Gunn, P. Klebanov and G. Duncan, Ethnic Differences in
Childrens Intelligence Test Scores: Role of Economic Deprivation, Home
Environment and Maternal Characteristics, Child Development 67 (1996).
4
By such an argument, one might claim that yardsticks of white manufacture
unable to measure the height of blacks, or that blacks should poorly at games
invented by whites, like basketball.
3

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property manifest in a variety of ways are its associations with

non-social variables. For instance, IQ correlates positively with
brain size5 and efficiency of cerebral glucose metabolization,6
although it is unlikely that white thoughts enlarge the brain, or
that white children are encouraged to slow the burning of sugar
in their frontal lobes. These correlations have so far been
established only for whites, but the techniques of modern
neurology 7 could be deployed tomorrow to search for race
differences in brain function.
The rank-order and correlational evidence against test bias
is indirect, but there is direct evidence. Logically speaking, a test
for a trait is biased against blacks when a black must possess
more of that trait to earn the same score that a white earns.
(Tennis as a test of athletic ability is biased against people
unfamiliar with the game, since only an outstanding athlete can
play passable tennis the first time.) If IQ tests are biased,
therefore, a black whose IQ measures (say) 110 should
outperform 110-IQ whites on tasks with a large intellectual
component, such as earning good grades in school. Yet
standardized tests do not under-predict black performance on
criterion tasks, and actually over-predict it8 that is, blacks
with a given IQ or SAT score typically earn lower grades than
whites with the same score. This anomaly suggests a weaker
black achievement drive: whites on average try harder than
blacks to reach long-term goals, and so whites reach those goals
more often when pure cognitive ability is controlled for.
Before moving to the motivation issue, I should note a
general point about intelligence stressed in Race: since there is no
evidence that blacks are as able as whites, the egalitarian case
for racial parity consists entirely of ad hoc conjectures 9 and
definitional objections directed against inegalitarianism. One
favorite target is the word race, allegedly too vague for
scientific employment. R a c e s response is simply to
operationalize Negroid [i.e. black] as having mostly subSaharan African ancestors, and Caucasoid [i.e. white] as
5
L. Willerman, R. Schultz, and J. Rutledge, In vivo Brain Size and Intelligence,
Intelligence 15 (1991).
6
R. Haier, B. Siegel, K. Nuechterlein, K. Hazlett, J. Wu, J. Paek, H. Browning, and
M. Buchsbaum, Cortical Glucose Metabolic Rate Correlates of Abstract Reasoning
and Attention Studied with Positron Emission Tomography, Intelligence 12 (1988).
7
Chiefly positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging.
8
W. Garner and A. Wigdor, Ability Testing (Washington, D.C.: National Academy
Press, 1982), 1, p. 72.
9
E.g. that the criteria for validating IQ, and the criteria for validating those criteria,
are all biased.

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having European ancestors. Erstwhile racial differences in IQ

can then be reformulated without loss of empirical content as IQ
differences between individuals with different geographical
ancestries, and hypotheses about genetic differences between the
races can be reformulated similarly. Nothing is lost but a word.10
Another popular conceptual objection is that no unitary
ability answers to the word intelligence. A statistical
technique called factor analysis is used to extract a single factor,
g, detected by all mental tests, but Stephen J. Gould and others
dismiss g as a mathematical artifact. The unitariness question is
rather technical, but the upshot is that it is irrelevant to all
racial issues. All sides agree that individual variation in IQ can
be analyzed as variation in g or in a cluster of more specific
factors such as verbal ability and numerical reasoning. Yet so far
as explaining black achievement goes, it makes no difference
whether whites are (a) more intelligent than blacks or (b) more
able verbally and better at numerical reasoning than blacks, for
in either case the race differences in literacy, school
achievement, participation in science and other socially
significant outcomes result from race differences in mental
activity rather than racism. Likewise, it does not matter
whether genes produce a race difference in intelligence or race
differences in verbal ability and numerical reasoning. Either way,
once again, genes, rather than racism, explain the difference in
cognitive performance and its social consequences. From the moral
point of view, finally, whites are innocent whether genes cause a
shortfall in black intelligence or shortfalls in a cluster of specific
abilities collectively labeled intelligence.
The burden of proof, usually borne by inegalitarians, should
be placed on egalitarians. Quite apart from any psychometric
tests, blacks seem less intelligent than whites. Black children do
far less well in school than white or Asian children; the black
adults seen in ordinary life and on television news commit more
crimes, parent more illegitimate children, have lower-paying
jobs, and boast less-regular work histories. Indeed, the very
absence of evidence for racial parity in intelligence, given that
evidence would exist (and be publicized by egalitarians) were
the races equally able, is evidence against it. The question is not
why anyone thinks whites are more intelligent than blacks, but
why anyone would think otherwise.

10

Race cites egalitarians who contest the use of some supposedly unclear word
(race, intelligence), and then contest its abandonment.

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299

III
Race differences in motivation are anchored by Walter
Mischels classic study of Dominican children who, when asked
to choose between a small candy bar at that moment or a larger
bar a week hence, overwhelmingly chose the smaller one. So
marked was the black preference for immediate gratification
when compared to a matched white sample that Mischel called
tests in statistical significance superfluous.11
Orientation to the present is a persistent theme of studies of
black behavior. Blacks watch almost 50% more television than
whites and, holding income fixed, spend three times as much on
movies. Blacks spend about as much on electronic games as
whites, but far less on computers. Black scores on the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory are indicative of impulse
ridden fantasies.12 Thomas Kochman reports that in turn-taking
situations, such as classroom discussion, blacks are much more
likely than whites to burst in out of order. 13 This pattern of
thought and behavior has been described as impulsiveness, lack
of self-restraint, lower ego-dominance, and more rapid decay of
reinforcement, but, as these terms contain implicit value
judgments or causal hypotheses, Race favors the economists
neutral notion of time preference. An individuals time preference
is measured by the money he would have to get tomorrow to
forego $1 today, and represents the rate at which he discounts
the future. In these terms, the mean phenotypic time-preference
of blacks is higher than that of whites.
Also, contrary to pop sociology, black self-esteem is
generally higher than white, 1 4 andwhat is obvious in
everyday lifethe black self-presentational style is more
confrontational. Blacks also appear to be less cooperative than
whites and less inclined to follow Kants categorical imperative,
popularly known as the golden rule. For instance, blacks are
11

W. Mischel, Preference for Delayed Reinforcement: An Experimental Study of a

Cultural Observation, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 56 (1958);
Preference for Delayed Reinforcement and Social Responsibility, Journal of
Abnormal and Social Psychology 62 (1961); Father-Absence and Delay of
Gratification: Cross-Cultural Comparisons, Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology 63 (1961).
12
See W. Dahlstrom, D. Lachar and L. Dahlstrom, MMPI Patterns of American
Minorities (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986).
13
T. Kochman, Black and White: Styles in Conflict (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1983).
14
A. Tashakkori and V. Thompson, Race Differences in Self-Perception and Locus
of Control during Adolescence and Early Adulthood, Genetic, Social and General
Psychological Monographs 117 (1991).

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significantly more likely than whites to agree with the

statement It is not hard for me to ask help from my friends even
though I cannot return the favor. Kochman detects a black
tendency to put self-expression ahead of the sensibilities of
others, as when talking back to the screen in a movie theater:
With the shift in focus from doing unto others to doing for
oneself, blacks can also act as their feelings direct without
subsequent guilt. The best evidence for what Race calls the lower
Kantianism of blacks is the black crime rate. Nobody, black or
white, wants to be victimized by theft, assault or murder, yet
blacks commit these acts far more frequently.
Defiant egotism has the same feel as impulsivenessthe
traits converge in refusal to wait ones turnbut there are deeper
links. Cooperation, reciprocal altruism, and kantianism
originate in the benefits accruing to everyone when everyone
pulls together. However, many cooperative situations present
Prisoners Dilemmas: pulling along with everyone else is
advantageous, but not as advantageous as pretending to pull
while everyone else does the work. This being so, the only self
interested reason not to cheat is the danger of being caught,
barred from future cooperative ventures, and ending up worse off
than if one had cooperated. But there is a catch: an individual
will choose cooperation only if he can grasp the future losses
jeopardized by cheating, and the time-discounted (dis)value of
those expected losses exceeds his immediate gain from cheating.
In other words, his intelligence must be sufficiently acute and his
time-preference rate sufficiently low. Thus, the lower mean
intelligence and higher mean time preferences of blacks explains their
less cooperative and rule-bound ethos.
Race connects intelligence and time preference to free will via
a difficulty in the standard exponential representation of
discounting.15 If you are indifferent between one unit of a good
(say, G) today and n units of G tomorrow, then your daily discount
factor is 1/n. (We can think of 1/n as being the inverse of the
gross interest rate: someone with a personal interest rate of 10%
has a gross interest rate of 110%principal plus interest.
Equivalently, one with a personal interest rate of 10% has a
discount factor of 1/1.1.) Thus, if 1/n is the mean discount factor
for whites and 1/n is the mean discount factor for blacks, then
Race is arguing that n>n.16
15

In Race, the following material is divided between an appendix and the chapter
on crime.

16
A standard discounting model might make sense when discussing finance,

where it makes little difference whether one is computing the present value of

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301

Still, weakness of will remains a puzzle on this analysis.

How is it possible to choose a dispreferred alternative, as we all
do whenever we eat a dessert we know we should avoid?
Weakness of will becomes more comprehensible in a model
where time discounting is hyperbolic.17 In a hyperbolic time
discounting model, the perceived value of G in the future depends
on how much one values a G in the hand, and on a parameter I,
known as the coefficient of impulsivity. To relate this back to
the standard model, think of I as being similar to n: the higher
the value of I, the lower the weight one gives to the future at any
fixed level of current holdings of G. The argument in Race is,
therefore, that the mean coefficient I for whites is smaller than
the mean coefficient I for blacks.18
So if I is the mean white coefficient, and I is the mean black
coefficient, Race argues that I>I. On this analysis, an agent may
prefer G in the hand to a smaller G in the hand, but, if G is
farther in the future than G, the perceived value of G can
temporarily overtake that of G.
Consider the following illustration. Entering a restaurant at
7:00, I prefer skipping my dessert at 8:00 to having a dessert at
8:00. I know at 9:00, I will be more pleased if I have skipped the
dessert than if I have succumbed. However, once my main course
has come and gone and the waiter returns to offer me a dessert,
my situation changes. If it is now 7:45, I no longer consider what
would have made me happier at 7:00. That time period has
come and gone, and now I only care about what pleases me now
and in the future. When the waiter asks if I should like him to
bring me the cheesecake, my answer depends on what pleases me
now and what will please me later; the more heavily I discount
the future, the more I will focus on what pleases me now. I refer
to the time period when the short-term pleasure of the dessert
tempts me as my period of weakness. I have weakened despite
having remembered what I had told myself at 7:00, and knowing
that I will feel indigestion at 9:00. It is during this interval that
I believe myself not in control, not fully autonomous.
$100 or $1,000,000. That is because the interest rates we see in financial models are
typically taken to be market equilibrium rates, not reflections of an individual
agents preferences. When we talk about individual behavior, we might expect
that the way one discounts the future depends largely on what one has in the
present. People may be more inclined to discount future utility, rather than simply
discounting future consumption.
17
The standard discussion is G. Ainslie, Picoeconomics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992).
18
The most elegant expression for perceived value is G/[It + Z], where Z is a
constant to keep perceived value from becoming infinite when t=0.

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Now, all else equal, larger coefficients of impulsivity will

bring about longer periods of weakness. The future becomes more
heavily discounted, so there is more room for a discrepancy
between the future decision which I initially plan to make
(avoiding the dessert) and the choice I actually make in the
future (when the waiter arrives with the dessert menu). The
argument in Race, that the coefficients of impulsivity are greater
for blacks than for whites, would therefore imply that blacks
will suffer longer and more frequent such episodes.
The fact that behavior during periods of weakness is less
than free is explained by John Lockes insight that free action
must not only express preferencesall action, even of children,
animals and madmen, does thatbut that the preferences
expressed must meet the agents approval. Race expounds a
conception of free will according to which an agent is free when
he is able to step back, examine his desires, and act on those
desires he prefers to act on. 1 9 This is why choosing a
prospectively dispreferred but transiently attractive alternative
is not free; I did what I wanted, but not what I wanted to want.
But a more significant corollary is that freedom increases with
reflectiveness and self-restraint. With insight into his own
motives, the intelligent man can anticipate preferences he does
not wish to act on, and thereby take steps to forestall their
becoming dominant. Cognizant that he will be tempted by
dessert, he may drink a glass of water, or shame himself into
declining dessert by assuring his companions beforehand that he
will. Self-restraint, for its part, gives a man time to contemplate
the consequences of yielding to questionable impulses.
Race concludes that blacks are, on average, less free and
responsible than whites. Further, it argues, awareness of this
disparity in autonomy explains why liberal fretfulness about the
root cause of black crime never matched by fretting about root
cause of stock fraud, or lynching, or the Holocaust. Liberals,
without quite admitting it even to themselves, think of black
crime as akin to an amoral natural force. This awareness also
explains liberal lenience, since penalizing black criminals seems
to punish them for what they cannot help. In this, we will
shortly see, liberals are wrong.
Although their self-esteem is higher, blacks consider
themselves more powerless than whites.20 At the same time,
19

The account is compatibilist, i.e. consistent with universal determinism.

A. Tashakkori, Race, Gender and pre-Adolescent Self-Strucure: A Test of
Construct-Specificity Hypothesis, Personality and Individual Differences 14 (1993).

20

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303

perception of powerlessness is associated with loss of self-esteem

among whites. This discrepancy offers some empirical support for
the greater heteronomy of blacks, for it can be interpreted as
showing that blacks regard the self as less a locus of control
than whites do.21 This is turn makes sense if, for blacks, the self
is a less significant mediator of behavior.

IV
Having discussed phenotype race differences, I now turn my
attention to the evidence fo rgenetic causes of those differences. I
group the evidence into seven categories.
1) The high interindividual heritability of IQ and personality
Holding group differences to one side, twin studies indicate
that genetic rather than environmental variation explains most
of the difference in intelligence between individuals, and much
of their personality differences. A pair of randomly selected
individuals will differ in IQ by about 17 points, but identical
twins reared apart typically differ by about six. Identicals
raised apart are also highly similar on dozens of personality
traits, including impulsivity. There are ad hoc environmentalist
explanations for some of these concordances,22 but only genetic
factors seem able to explain them all.
At this juncture environmentalists can be relied on to insist
that a genetic account of individual differences does not entail a
genetic account of group differences. After all, genetically
identical seeds will yield plants of different heights in different
soil. This is true enough, but it is also clear that some mean group
differences are too large to be explained plausibly by any
environmental divergence. Bonsai might all be undernourished
Redwoods, but it is not very likely. Numbers crunched in Race
show how unlikely it is that differences in black and white
environments have produced the racial IQ gap. Speaking
qualitatively, this conclusion is very natural. American whites
and blacks would seem to inhabit quite similar environments
they speak the same language, watch the same TV shows and
movies, attend schools with identical curricula, vote in the same
elections. Black slums are of course less salubrious than white
suburbs, but since a neighborhood is created by its residents, the
disarray in black slums counts as an effect rather than a cause of
21

Tashakkori and Thompson, Race Differences.

I.e., separated twins get placed in similar families; twins reunited by psychologists
influence each other.

22

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race differences. (Race discusses such gene/environment

correlation at length.) Indeed, the fixity of the IQ gap during a
century that has seen black and white environments converge
leaves genes the only remaining source of variance.
2) Early appearance of race differences.
The appearance of the IQ gap before age four rules out most
environmental causes: low teacher expectation cannot affect the
development of a black infant still in his cradle. One
environmentalist hypothesis consistent with the early onset of
race differences is poor nutrition for black children, but this must
be rejected on other grounds: (1) black babies are physically more
precocious than white; (2) Department of Agriculture surveys
indicate that black children do get the minimum requirement of
vitamins and minerals; and (3) blacks dominate sports from early
youth on. If, however, there is truth in the claims that black
children receive poor nutrition, then the failure of black mothers
to feed their children properly in a society inundated with
messages about good health may itself indicate lower parental
intelligence, which might then be passed to offspring.
3) Physiological race differences
IQ correlates with brain size, and, controlling for body size,
black brains are about 4% less massive than white. 23 To argue
that brain size means one thing for whites and another for blacks
would countenance race differences in the functional organization
of the brain, a position as biological as genetic differences, and
presumably as repugnant to environmentalists. In any event, the
IQ/brain size correlation appears to hold between as well as
within races, since black and white head sizeshence,
inferentially, brain sizesare identical when IQ is controlled
for. Although I have heard environmentalists conjecture that
racism shrinks black brains, this finding is difficult to explain
non-genetically, since eventual adult brain size is fixed by early
childhood.
With regard to temperament, young black males exhibit
relatively high levels of serum testosterone, a mediator of
aggression and libido. A race difference has also been found in a
gene controlling alcoholism.
4) Transracial adoption
Sandra Scarr and her colleagues tracked over one hundred
black and mixed-race infants adopted in the late 1960s by upper
23
Data is cited in Race; J. Rushton, Race, Evolution and Behavior (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Transaction, 1994) contains a thorough review and analysis.

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middle-class white families. The mean IQ of the black adoptees

at age 7 was 97, but had fallen to 89 by age 17. More significantly,
at both junctures the IQs of the black cohort remained a standard
deviation behind those of the birth children and the white
adoptees of the adoptive families. Scarr takes these figures to
show the persistence of racism in the surrounding culture, but she
does not specify what racist influences the adoptive families
failed to block. A genetic analysis is obviously simpler.
Incidentally, the decline in black IQ with age in the
adoption study is consistent with the known increase in the
heritability of intelligence across the life span. The currently
accepted theory is that individuals increasingly shape their
own environments as they mature, so that their environments
come increasingly to reinforce innate tendencies. The parents of a
genetically dull child may read to and otherwise stimulate him
to a reasonable level of school achievement, but as an adult on
his own he will cease reading and choose nonintellectual
companions, leading to less-impressive intellectual performance.
5) Failure of Intervention
Like transracial adoption, early intervention programs such
as Head Start control for many of the environmental variables to
which lower black intelligence is commonly attributed.
Facilities designed by highly motivated psychologists to
stimulate children as young as six months are not likely to omit
any factor crucial for mental development. Yet these programs
have produced no lasting gains in the IQs or academic
achievements of black children (although Head Start h a s
produced small but measurable gains in the academic
achievement of white children).
6) Achievement of other Minorities
Despite functioning in more deprived environments, many
groups, including American Indians, outscore blacks on IQ tests,
particularly on the least culture-bound items. Jews, persecuted
more viciously than blacks for many centuries, have consistently
produced a disproportionate number of scholars wherever they
have lived. Chinese and Japanese in the US, two highly
successful groups, are as recognizably non-white as blacks,
undercutting the hypothesis that black failure is related to
identifiability. Explaining the differential success of various
groups in terms of their cultural values is circular, as it begs the
question of why different groups inculcate different values.

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7) Africa
There was no white racism in Africa during the millennia
that blacks have dominated that continent, yet the mean IQ of
African blacks is considerably lower than that of American
blacks. Again contradicting conventional wisdom, Race crunches
some more numbers to show that the 100,000+ years during which
Africans and Eurasians evolved apart was enough to permit the
African/Caucasoid divergence.
No sub-Saharan society has ever developed mathematics, a
written language, formal educational institutions, or the wheel,
while white and Asian societies have done so many times. Once
again, attribution of this failure to culture is circular, begging as
it does the question of why whites and Asians, but not blacks,
built cultures in which these indicia of civilization appeared.
Race takes the strongly individualistic line that culture and
society are not independent causal factors shaping their
members, but effects of their members individual properties
effects, that is, of phenotypes expressing underlying genotypes in
ambient physical environments. Cultural attainments thus
mirror innate factors.
Thus, looking at these seven categories of genetic data, to say
that blacks are genetically less intelligent and more impulsive
than whites is not racist, since racism is by definition bad, and
facts, however unwelcome, are morally neutral. Mention of genes
and race in the same breath triggers hysteria not because it is a
reminder of Hitler (nobody can seriously fear a Nazi resurgence),
but, Race proposes, because genes determine personal identity.
The reader is asked first to imagine his zygote, with his genes,
born into an environment unlike his natal one and becoming an
adult with phenotypes unlike his; I suspect he will agree that
the adult described would still be him. The reader is next asked
to imagine a zygote with different genes somehow developing
into an adult with precisely his present phenotypes; I suspect he
will agree that that being would nonetheless not be him.
Judgments of identity thus track genotypes, making genetic but
not environmental factors essential to the self. For this reason,
genetic deficiencies are seen as essential, and talk of them
consequently more wounding, than deficiencies imposed by the
environment.

V
Before it turns to any concrete implications of the race

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differences, Race devotes two chapters to the topic of norms. My

concern that this material might pull the discussion too far
toward pure philosophy was overridden by several worries that
prompted its inclusion.
For one thing, I wished to make clear that no empirical facts
about race imply that whites are better than blacks, a judgment so
often imputed to hereditarians that only a full airing of the issue
of value can put the imputation to rest. To this end Race presents
a resolutely naturalistic, non-realist view of values. There
being no empirical phenomena requiring objective value for their
explanation, we have no more reason to believe in it than to
believe in phlogiston, or the little man that wasnt there. A
Gods-eye view favors neither high nor low time preferences;
investing $150 may be more prudent than spending it on running
shoes, but it is not inherently better. Greater intelligence is
likewise no better or worse than or equal in value to less
intelligence. The mean intelligence levels of whites and blacks
were adaptations to selectional pressures at work in Africa and
Eurasia, just as the lions strength and the gazelles speed are
evolved responses to selectional pressures in their niches. And
just as the lions talons are neither better nor worse than the
gazelles speedeach creature simply is what it iswhites are
not better or worse than blacks.
R a c e is similarly neutral toward morality itself. An
individuals moral values are construed as those of his
preferences that he wants everyone to adopt (and wants everyone
to want everyone to adopt); and a groups morality is the set of
moral values shared by most of its members. Given the
advantages of mutual trust and the temptations to exploit trust
by lying, it is likely that every group reinforces truthfulness to
some extent. However, groups may differ in the moral values
they adopt and the intensity with which they reinforce them.
Moral codes, too, are adaptations over evolutionary time to
differing environmental conditions, none better (or healthier)
than any other. In particular, it is suggested, individuals had a
better chance of surviving by their solitary efforts in the milder
sub-Saharan climate than in Eurasia, leading to less intense
selection for cooperativeness and reciprocity. That is why blacks
appear to be less cooperative or committed to the golden rule
than whites. Strictly speaking, the black/white difference is not
so much a divergence in moralityin the rules blacks and whites
universally prescribeas in concern for morality itself. The
notion of a moral value has universality built into it by
definition, so relative indifference to the golden rule amounts to

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greater amorality. But once again, amorality for the naturalist is

no better or worse than morality. Wolves are amoral, but there
are no grounds for judging a world with moral agents but without
wolves better or worse than one with wolves but lacking moral
agents.
It is proposed that this evolved divergence in morality helps
explain the curious racial guilt felt by whites who have done
nothing to blacks, and the deference of many whites to the most
outlandish black demands. Whites, having evolved to interact
with other whites, interpret black signals to mean what they
would mean coming from whites. Whites are programmed to
interpret and respond to black indignation as if it signaled the
more serious injuries that would elicit that level of indignation
from whites, so constantly overestimate the seriousness of black
injuries.
Race insists that explaining honesty and reciprocity by their
inclusive genetic fitness24 does not reduce morality to disguised
selfishness. Inclusive fitness theory, despite much bad press, does
not deny that people are morally motivated to play fair and
sometimes make sacrifices. It claims, rather, that maximization
of genetic fitness is why these motives exist. A tendency to
cooperate in Prisoners Dilemmas and even sacrifice oneself for
others is an evolutionarily stable strategy, but the motive of
cooperation selected is nonreductively unselfish.
Skeptical naturalism also raises the practically pressing
worry of how to draw normative consequences from race
differences. Can a skeptic criticize affirmative action or endorse
freedom of association if neither is intrinsically good or bad?
Races answer exploits two old philosophical saws: (a) Much
apparently normative disagreement is actually disguised factual
disagreement, and (b) all genuinely normative suasion assumes
some prior agreement on normative principles. Option (a) lets
naturalists participate in the many moral disputes resoluble by
empirical investigation: whether Jones owes Smith damages for
his broken leg, for instance, depends on whether Jones did in fact
break it, a factual issue the naturalist may address. In the case of
essentially normative disputes, option (b) counsels the naturalist
to bring his interlocutor around by appealing to his interlocutors
values. Show a man that your view is implicit in his
commitments, and he must accept your view on pain of
24

Measured by the number of genetic relatives carrying partial copies of its genes
which an organism leaves behind, as opposed to individual fitness, which is an
organisms own probability of survival.

Levin Why Race Matters

309

inconsistency. Such an appeal is no weaker for being ad hominem,

since everyone thinks his own values are correct.
In light of this, the pragmatically most fruitful perspective
from which to discuss race is that of my reader who, I assume,
accepts Caucasoid values. After seeking to epitomize Caucasoid
values (they revolve, I say, around the golden rule), Race applies
them to a cluster of issues at the heart of Americas race
problem.

VI
Those few on the Right (Herrnstein and Murray 25 ) or Left
(Christopher Jencks 26 ) willing to discuss psychological race
differences say their origin does not matter. One aim of the
pivotal chapter Biology and Justice is to show how issues of
racial justice hinge on whether these differences are biological in
origin.
The quota debate is patently about compensatory justice,
since quotas are meant to redress injuries said to have been
inflicted on blacks by whites. Lyndon Johnson introduced
affirmative action for government contractors via the analogy of
a man released from shackles required to run a foot race, and who
(Johnson reasoned) deserves a head start to make up for his unjust
handicap.
Many quota advocates say they reject the redress rationale.
Johnsons metaphor has lost its vigor as it has been realized that
an edge for the lame runner cheats his competitors, who are in no
way responsible for his plight. In literal terms, affirmative
action, particularly when state-imposed, is recognized as prima
facie unfair to whites who never discriminated.27 To dodge this
objection, defenders of affirmative action now say it is necessary
to create role models or prevent renewed discrimination. Ronald
Dworkin offers an elaborate rationale based on a distinction
between personal and external preferences. Race spends a number
of pages arguing that virtually all of these rationales tacitly
rely on compensation, or share the compensatory premise that
the race gap in attainment is due to harm done to blacks by
whites. The compensation rationale and its many avatars are no
firmer than the causal premise.
25

R. Herrnstein and C. Murray, The Bell Curve (New York: The Free Press, 1994).
C. Jencks, Rethinking Social Policy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1992).
27
Assuming that discrimination is an injury, which I do assume in this chapter.
26

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Ironically, most critics of affirmative action also leave this

premise unchallenged, perhaps in hope of avoiding the epithet
racist. Affirmative action is bad, they say, because it
stigmatizes blacks, or costs too much, or replaces equality of
opportunity with equality of result. There is something to many
of these criticisms, but Race takes pains to show why, by missing
the logical heart of the matter, they are also rhetorically
ineffective. The causal question is all.
A propos cost, it is curious that redress for racial wrongdoing
is always said to require placing blacks where they should have
been, even though their inferior qualifications incurs great
inefficiency. After all, redress is normally constrained by
feasibility: when literal restoration of the complainant to his
uninjured condition would be too disruptive, an equivalent is
thought sufficient. A dancer who loses his foot in an accident
asks the earnings the accident cost him, not the right to be a one
legged King Kastchei. Race speculates as to why champions of
redress accept no cheaper substitutes, such as lump-sum
reparation payments, for compensatory hiring.
Because affirmative action rests on a theory of the cause of
the racial attainment gap, Race argues, only the race differences
in intelligence and motivation, which explain the gap more
plausibly than racism, offers a convincing case against it.
Negatively, racial discrimination cannot explain black failure
because there is not enough of it. Slavery ended over 130 years
ago; segregation in the public schools ended over 40. Private
discrimination has been a federal tort since 1964, and
government-sponsored preference for blacks has pervaded
American society since 1970. Whites frequently favor black
candidates in elections. Positively, the IQ gap predicts the
contours of black failure with remarkable accuracy. For instance,
according to the IQ data, only about 13 blacks in any one-year
cohort are as intelligent as the average mathematician, and in
fact, blacks earn only about a half-dozen doctorates in the
mathematical sciences annually, a impressive fit given the
small numbers involved. Black over-representation in classes for
the mentally retarded falls right out of the IQ numbers. As one
might expect in a quota-ridden society, blacks are over-represented
in prestigious areas when IQ is fixed.28 There is no quantitative
data on the contribution of impulsivity to the attainment gap,
but Race cites many commentators on the low level of black
entrepreneurship and willingness to work.
28

here the work of Herrnstein and Murray, and Linda Gottfredson is called on.

Levin Why Race Matters

311

That the attainment gap is explained by race differences in

phenotypic intelligence and motivation allows heads-up
compensation theorists to reply (as some have) that this
phenotypic variance is itself caused by racism. Blacks dont try
because trying is pointless when the deck is stacked against
them. And were racism thus indirectly responsible for the
attainment gap, the compensation argument would reenter at one
remove, with blacks deserving redress for their wrongfully
caused dysfunctional traits. That is why letting the issue rest at
the phenotypic level is inconclusive. The case for reparation can
be judged only by looking at whether racism offers a better
account than biology of the lower IQs and higher time
preferences of blacks. The topic of genes is unavoidable, Race
insists. No matter what the black shortcoming, some will insist
that racism is its cause, or the cause of its cause, or the cause of
that cause. Sooner or later, the genetic question must be faced.
In factthis theme permeates Raceplay of the gene card,
far from being a gratuitous swipe at blacks, has been forced on
defenders of justice by the constant diabolization of whites. It is
impossible to be silent when silence amounts to an admission of
guilt. When Smith limps into court, berates Jones for breaking his
leg, and demands damages, Smith must be prepared to hear Jones
deny the charge. Smith has opened the door to alternative
hypotheses about the cause of his deformity, for instance that it
runs in his family, and he must be prepared to face them. Smith
cannot accuse Jones and then call him tactless for pleading
innocentexactly what liberals do when they blame whites for
black woes, then call whites who deny the charge insensitive
and try to silence them with speech codes.
Actually, Race notes two commonly neglected reasons why
genetic arguments may not be strictly necessary to rebut the
compensation argument. First, the suffering of the North and the
non-slave-holding South during a Civil War fought to give black
slaves their freedom may have made further white sacrifices
superfluous (i.e., non-slaveholding whites have already done
more than their fair share). Second, subsequent black behavior
may have canceled any remaining debt. The high black crime
rate and the preference of black offenders for white victims have
subjected whites to many more murders and robberies than would
have been inflicted by a white subpopulation of equal size. In
addition, blacks have marred or destroyed enormous stretches of
real property created by whites, as is obvious from a tour of any
large black neighborhood. On balance, blacks may owe whites
compensation.

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Race pursues the issue of justice beyond compensation, to the

distributive fairness of racial inequalities. Many writers simply
assume that we (unspecified) should keep trying
environmental interventions in hope of finding one that raises
black IQs to white levels.
The obvious objection is that such regimens may not exist.
Champions of lets keep trying treat what is possibly possible
as if it were actual, whereas the racial gap may be, like
differences in eye color, ontogenetically fixed. But there are
deeper problems. Whites alone can afford to fund efforts to raise
black IQs, and it is not obvious, once compensation is set aside,
why whites have any duty to channel resources to that end.
Virtually no one believes that equality is good per se. 29 The
environments of black children are less stimulating than those of
white children, but, Race insists, the distributive baseline for
where American blacks should be, namely the sub-Saharan
African milieu they would have occupied had they never
encountered whites, is far less stimulating than a plantation or a
segregated school in the Jim Crow south, to say nothing of modern
schools. Perhaps everyone has an equal right to resources when
they are literally the unprocessed bounty of nature, but
Caucasoid morality decrees that wealth created by human
hands belongs to the hands that made it.
Whereas it is always clear who should finance correction of
a compensatory injustice, namely the tort-feasor or his legatees,
appeals to distributive justice obscure the cost question. In fact,
may proponents of distributive justice, like John Rawls,
explicitly divorce distributive rights to wealth from contribution
to it, and are duly chastised in R a c e for this. Critics of
inequality, like Jonathan Kozol, who complain of more money
being spent on predominantly white than predominantly black
schools are not merely uninformed, although they are that
more is now spent per capita on black children than on white
children in the nations public schools because blacks need more
special education and counseling. Worse, these critics are
morally obtuse: there would be nothing wrong with white
children receiving more resources, given that these resources are
controlled almost exclusively by white parents. Per capita,
blacks pay about half the income tax whites do, and 20% of the
property taxes, the main source of school funding. Statistics cited
in Race show Southern whites during the Jim Crow era paying
$15.60 for black schools for every $1 paid by blacks. It takes
29

The discourses of some prominent soi-disant egalitarians like John Baker and
Michael Walzer are deconstructed to this effect.

Levin Why Race Matters

313

considerably imaginative effort to appreciate it, but the

segregated schools of the American South expressed white
generosity, and integration has given blacks access to schools,
with their labs and computers, even further beyond what blacks
could create by their own efforts.
The chapter on justice ends with glimpses at utilitarianism
and Rawlss Difference Principle, that permissible inequalities
must benefit the worst off. While neither is consistent with
ordinary conceptions of justice, it is noteworthy that utilitarian
bang-for-the-buck calculations and (rather surprisingly) the
Difference Principle may both steer resources away from blacks.
Over time, the average well-being and the prospects of the worst
off have been most markedly lifted by the inventiveness of the
intellectual elite. Directing contested resources to societys most
giftedpredominantly white and Asian studentsmay thus
help everyone, blacks included, more than directing those same
resources to blacks, a conjecture confirmed by the improved white
performance unmatched by improved black performance returned
on the investment in Head Start.

VII
Race begins its discussion of crime with data showing that
blacks commit violent felonies at a rate ten times that of whites,
and decidedly prefer white victims. Despite the enormous
publicity given to any white-on-black felony, a black is on
average about twenty-five times more likely to kill a white than
vice-versa. The question is what responses are appropriate.
Race divides the question into private and public. Its view of
appropriate private measures, not shocking to libertarians but
scandalous in many quarters, is that individuals have a right to
consider race when assessing risk, and to be especially careful
when dealing with blacks. It is rational for a man on a deserted
street to be more leery of a black heading his way than he would
be of a white, and to cross the street or turn around. It is rational
for a cabbie to refuse to pick up young black males. Unfortunately,
such permissible avoidance is now often illegal. Cabbies who
refuse black fares lose their licenses.
Libertarians will wonder why a right to avoid blacks needs
any defense at all, since it falls under voluntary association and
self-defense. Here emerges a theme prominent in the last third of
Race: the rationality of exercising rights race-consciously.
Americans respect freedom of association, but they also want

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assurance that it is not being abused. One reason for passage of

the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, and other
infringements of liberty has been the conviction that a wish not
to hire or otherwise associate with blacks must be absurd,
vicious, or insane. This conviction has forced friends of liberty to
say, in effect, There is no good reason to avoid blacks, but people
have a right to do so anyway, which, while perfectly consistent
(a right is a right, after all), leaves non-libertarians
dissatisfied. The statistics on race and crime show that
avoidance of blacks is perfectly rational.
A right to flee danger is not the only truism defended at
inordinate length in this context; several abstruse issues about
statistical inference and risk are analyzed to prove that, since
blacks commit more crime than whites, an arbitrarily chosen
black is more apt to be a criminal than is an arbitrarily chosen
white. Where race is concerned, people will deny what they
elsewhere find obvious, necessitating argumentative overkill.
Libertarians may join liberals in rejecting race-conscious state
enforcement of rights against aggression, but I argue that this too
is permissible.30 For instance, a policeman may frisk a young
black male under circumstances in which he may not frisk a young
white male, on the statistical grounds that the black is more
likely to be up to no good.
Races preliminary argument for this conclusion is the
precedent offered by suspect profiles for interdicting smugglers
and other statistical algorithms used by the state to deter crime.
The central argument is appeal to the Hobbes/Locke theory of
the state. While Locke and Hobbes of course disagree about the
existence of natural rights, they are at one that the purpose of
government is to guarantee security; the state exists to prevent
aggression. Moreover, this function is normally understood to
allow some preemptive action against merely potential
aggressors. I may disarm a man gesturing menacingly with a gun,
and the police, my agents, may detain him. Since race is a valid
predictor of threat, the state may consider race in pursuing its
preemptive function. I emphasize that race-based screening
meets the Supreme Courts strict scrutiny standard, which
permits only those racial classifications necessary to achieve a
compelling government interest. Controlling aggression is the
states raison dtre, a compelling interest if any is, and crime
statistics show that attention to race may be necessary for its
30

A libertarian can recast the issue as the permissibility of race-conscious action

taken by his protective association.

Levin Why Race Matters

315

discharge.
An aside in this context about Nozicks Anarchy, State and
Utopia may interest libertarians. My defense of race-based
screening is patently rights-maximizing, permitting aggression
against possible innocents to minimize aggression against
innocents overall. (I have argued earlier that ordinary
Caucasoid morality maximizes rights in extreme cases.) As is
well known, Nozick claims to reject such utilitarianism of rights
in favor of a nearly absolute prohibition against aggression. I
note, however, that his own derivation of the state is also
rights-maximizing, for it lets the dominant voluntary protective
association impose itself on independents because of the anxiety
independents create for association subscribers. That a
deontologist such as Nozick should find himself relying on
minimizing intuitions does not vindicate race-conscious screening,
but it does show how deeply such intuitions inform the ordinary
concept of the state.
As the root cause of black crime seems to be so urgent a
problem to so many, evidence is reprised that black crime is
caused by the relatively low genetic intelligence, self-control
and kantianism of blacks. 31 An important misconception
addressed here is that the sharp increase in black crime over the
last sixty years, presumably unaccompanied by any major genetic
change, proves that black crime is environmental in origin.
Relaxed sanctions against wrongdoing have certainly facilitated
an increase in black crime, so the cause of the increase in black
crime in particular may be deemed environmental. However, this
easing of sanctions has produced no corresponding increase in
white crime. What is more, the net overall change in the
criminal justice system has been toward an increasing similarity
(and lenity) in the treatment of blacks and whites. Divergent
responses to a similar environment imply genetic differentiation,
so the post-1960 rise in black crime together with the stability of
white crime makes the race difference in crime rates likely to be
genetic.
Tracing black crime to genetic factors leads back to free will
and responsibility. Race defends the view that, while the lower
mean level of responsibility of blacks makes them by definition
less punishable than whites, it permits other measures to control
black crime. After all, homicidal maniacs, although not
punishable, are not let roam free. Race suggests some possible
31

A description offered by a group of young black males of their social relations

bears a striking similarity to Hobbess account of the state of nature.

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deterrent measures, including swifter imposition of harsher

sanctions on blacks than whites for the same infraction, in light
of higher black time preferences, and (in light of the apparent
more rapid maturation of blacks) treatment of blacks as adult
offenders at an earlier age than whites. It is also noted that if
white mistreatment has so affected the psyches of blacks that
they are not accountable for their actions, as some apologists
assert, blacks must also forego civil privileges associated with
full rationality, such as voting and jury service.
The chapter on crime seeks above all to discredit the idea
that black crime is an excusable payback for white misdeeds, an
idea which encourages black criminals and weakens the will to
resist them. Excuses for black crime would be equally poisonous
even if blacks have been as mistreated as liberals believe, Race
concludes, because no society can function with one group exempt
from rules against theft and violence.

VIII
By now, many readers of Race will have wondered at my
willingness, as in the case of selective police attention, to let
people be judged on the basis of their race. Does not Caucasoid
morality demand that each person be judged as an individual?
Arguably the issue of individualism should have been faced at
the outset, but it is best discussed in light of the facts and
distinctions accumulated in the meanwhile. I conclude that the
principle of individualism as conventionally formulated is
preposterous, and when made plausible it allows race
consciousness.
I stress at once that the principle of individualism is
unavailable to supporters of quotas, who tend to trumpet it in
other contexts. Every rationale for affirmative action is shown to
classify by race and draw race-based statistical inferences about
individuals.32 This is not merely hypocrisy on the part of quota
enthusiasts; it reflects their recognition that all judgments, all
descriptions, categorize. Calling Jones optimistic, surely an
individual trait, groups him with all the other optimists.
Affirmative action errs not in grouping all whites together, but in
grouping incorrectly. It would be perfectly proper to reason Most
whites profit from oppression; Jones is white; so Jones probably
profits from oppression were the generalization true;
affirmative action is wrong because the generalization is false.
32

Another self-evident truth that requires banging away at.

Levin Why Race Matters

317

People cannot be judged by the traits that make them unique.

Attempting to do so would produce such absurdities as
friendships and hiring decisions based on fingerprints, or on
precise places and times of birth. The shibboleth of
individualism means, if anything, judging people by their
important traits, which may not be uniqueJoness optimism
properly influences how he is treated, but Jones is not the lone
optimistand anyway leaves important undefined. At the end
of the day, Race argues, important traits are either those valued
for their own sake, or (what is more relevant in the racial
context) those that are predictively valid. Optimism is part of
who someone is because it tells others something about his
sense of humor, behavior under pressure, and overall personality.
By this standard, a persons race also is important, for it supports
numerous reasonable expectations. Taking someones race into
account is thus consistent with treating him as an individual.
It classifies him with all other members of his race, true, but
noticing someones optimism classifies him with all the other
optimists. Of course, one should when possible look at more than
race, just as one should try to learn as much about any individual
as is relevant to the evaluation at hand. But sometimes learning
more isnt possible, as when you are deciding whether to proceed
ahead on the running track, or what to do when your
neighborhood school becomes predominantly black. In any case,
it caricatures awareness of a persons race to equate it with
disregard of all his other traits.33
An almost-reflexive objection to race-consciousness is that
race is involuntary, and that it is unfair to judge people by traits
they cannot help. Yet most everyday treatment of people is based
on involuntary, immutable traits. Mates are chosen because of
their appearance and personality, neither of which are chosen.
Personnel decisions are task-driven, and there is no reason to
expect the ability to perform a valued task to be voluntary.
Managers pick the rookie infielder with the fastest reflexes,
even though reflexes are not subject to the will, because infielders
must snag line drives. Conversely, many voluntary traits are
irrelevant to how individuals should be treated. For example,
the Admissions Committee for a law school will be unmoved by
an applicants beer can collection.
R a c e speculates that the artificial link between
voluntariness and importance was forged mainly by the civil
rights movement. Once it was decided to ban racial
33

Race reviews a number of caricatures of race consciousness.

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discrimination, some characteristic of race was needed to justify

the ban; since race is involuntary, discrimination based on
involuntary traits was proscribed (a proscription that
subsequently rationalized banning free association based on sex,
handicap and many another trait). The link has been sustained
by the perception of all goods as rewards; since only voluntary
behavior merits reward or punishment, goods like employment
and housing (it then seems) must not be allotted by involuntary
attributes like race. In truth, very few goods are bestowed as
rewards. A rookies place on the team is not a prize for quick
reflexes, however much it feels that way to him, but an amoral
management decision dictated by the goal of a winning team,
dictated in its turn by the need to attract paying fans.
If race-consciousness is permissible and rational, what of
action based on it, i.e. discrimination? Focusing first on the
private sphere, Race distinguishes positive discrimination
harming someone because of his racefrom negative
discrimination, the refusal to benefit someone because of his race.
Positive discrimination is indeed wrong, but because of its
aggressive rather than discriminatory character. Negative
discrimination is not wrong at all, although it can be made to
seem so when represented as harm, for instance by describing a
black turned away from a job as a victim of discrimination.
However, an applicant denied a job whether because of
credentials, his race, or pure whim, is no worse off than he was
prior to the refusal, hence not injured.
Libertarians will once again wonder at the fuss over the
obvious, here the right to refuse an association for any reason, or
no reason at all. Yes, Race acknowledges this right (deducing it
from the categorical imperative); the deeper question it asks is
why so many Americans have surrendered it, and taken it from
those not willing to surrender it, in the name of civil rights. A
couple of answers have already been broached. The assumption
that blacks are just like whites, or would be but for
discrimination, makes refusal to deal with blacks appear
wholly irrational. By this point, I hope, readers of Race will be
ready to agree that race differences in intelligence, behavior,
and Kantianism show reluctance to deal with blacks to be quite
rational. A second answer, it is argued, is that the perception of
refusal to benefit blacks as coercing them is traceable to blacks
own limitations. As blacks could not enjoy Caucasian
technologyTVs, multi-story dwellings, automobilesunless
whites sold or gave it to them, white refusal to do so appears to
keep blacks from these goods. Race tries to make clear that refusal

Levin Why Race Matters

319

to give or sell someone something he cannot make himself leaves

his productive capacities undiminished, so does not harm him.
What of public discrimination? Having already argued that
the state may act race-consciously to protect rights against
attack, Race suggests that race-conscious welfare policies may be
in order. While all welfare states may self-destruct sooner or
later, as an increasing number of people batten off the public
treasury, most whites, at least so far, prefer working and
parenting children within marriage over the seductions of
welfare. Consequently, a limited safety net might be stable in an
all-white population. But the very different response of blacks
to welfare incentives, including an illegitimacy rate nearing
70%, is by now familiar, making a safety net for blacks clearly
unstable. If we must have welfare, Race suggests, blacks should be
denied it or held to more stringent criteria. A general caution for
libertarians is that institutions which dont work in black or
multiracial populations (public education is an example) need
not, by that token, be intrinsically flawed. The problem may not
be the institution, but the population.
Race contends that the equal protection clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment is consistent with state race
consciousness. The Fourteenth Amendment excludes only racial
classifications irrelevant to any vital government function.
(Inborn, involuntary and immutable traits might well be
relevant, as when the state denies drivers licenses to the
congenitally blind.) The Constitutional powers-that-be have
decided that compensating blacks is a sufficiently central
government function to support laws burdening whites. Race
presses the logical symmetry of racial classifications burdening
blacks.

IX
Instead of ending Race with a conventional authorial
compendium of conclusions, I asked myself what I would want an
American President to say in a major speech about race. That
speech concludes Race.
The chief message of my imaginary President is honesty. The
facts about race must be faced unflinchingly, and whites must
stop being blamed for everything. More concretely, my imaginary
President lays out three basic approaches to race differences.
Minimizing envisions large-scale social engineeringdaycare,
childhood enrichment, racial preferences, job trainingto reduce

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the race gap as much as is possible. This approach is not

categorically ruled out, but the President makes clear that it
will generate legitimate white resentment and probably not
work even on its own terms. Eugenic measures such as tax-funded
incentives to encourage the more intelligent to reproduce are also
rejected as taking too long, and not being the states business.
The second approach, control, would seek to reduce disruptive
black deviation from white norms by instilling self-discipline,
respect for law, and the work ethic. It would ease the regulatory
burden on black businesses, restrict or eliminate welfare, and
impose swifter and more effective punishment for crime. Its
downside is infringement of civil liberties and possible creation
of civil disorder.
The laissez-faire approach is the policy, or non-policy, of
leaving everything to the market. It would end all forms of
income transfer on moral as well as practical grounds, repeal all
laws against private discrimination, and abolish the minimum
wage, allowing the many blacks with limited skills to find
gainful employment. A small government would operate
virtually race-neutrally on the economically efficient basis of
merit. The market has the great advantages of not aiming at any
pre-set outcome which biology may have put out of reach, and of
imposing discipline without coercion. My imaginary President
does not explicitly endorse laissez faire (he is, after all, President
of all the people, including liberal statists), but his preference is
unmistakable.
One might think that acknowledging biological race
differences entails enhanced private and public race
consciousness, but a suggested alternative is realistic race
blindness: racial criteria should not be used in making public or
private decisions, but the disparate racial impact of almost any
decision is to be anticipated and disregarded as a natural
consequence of race differences. A good idea apart from its racial
impact is a good ideaperiod. If, for instance, it is
pedagogically wise to track schoolchildren by ability, and the
only reason not to do so is white and Asian dominance of the fast
groups and black over-representation in the slow groups, then
children should be tracked. However, it might be appropriate to
weigh the racial impact of policies whose effect on any specific
individual is unpredictable, but to which the races can be
expected on average to react in significantly different ways. The
President warns that welfare and penology may demand
realistic race conscious.

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321

Mindful of the radical (by todays lights) character of some

of his proposals, he cites Claudiuss precept that diseases
desperate grown By desperate measures are relieved, or not at
all.
Although Race makes some effort to explain my personal
motives in taking up these highly charged issues, it may still be
said that my views are defeatist, and that we should all
continue to proceed on the assumption of racial equality. In the
long battle between enlightenment and obscurantism, however,
unpleasant truth has always proved more useful than well
intentioned lies.